Journals of the House of Representatives of the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon: title varies, 1849-1913, var. state printers, all
published. (The journals for the House and Senate were published in separate series until 1913. Subsequent sessions were memorialized in a combined series
inextricably covering both houses that is offered on this site as a separate title. At the end of the eighteenth century the phrase “Oregon Territory ”
signified a vast but amorphous area stretching from somewhere above the Spanish settlements in California to somewhere below the Russian settlements
in Alaska, and including just about everything within that span between the Rockies and the Pacific. Spain, Russia, Great Britain, and the United
States all made equally nebulous claims on the area. By 1818 the lack of forces on the ground having rendered the Spanish claims untenable, the United
States and Great Britain attempted to exclude all other parties by signing a Convention of Joint Occupation. The reality of the latter was confirmed in
1821, when Russia agreed to limit its settlements to areas within present-day Alaska. The joint U.S./U.K. occupation kept the peace for a decade or two
so long as the area was virtually unpopulated by Europeans. A legislature of sorts functioned in the more American southern part of the territory
during 1844-49. The laws adopted by that body can be found in the compiled laws of Oregon, 1853. By the mid-1840s there were sufficient American settlers
in the southern portions of the condominium that determining who was in charge came near to being a causus belli. Fortunately, in 1846 President Polk
negotiated a treaty that conceded everything north of the forty-ninth parallel, and all of Vancouver Island, to Great Britain. In 1848 Congress
organized everything south of the forty-ninth parallel as the Territory of Oregon. The first Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oregon met in July
of 1849. Statehood finally came on February 14, 1859, but only after the area comprising the contemporary State of Washington had been severed off and
organized into Washington Territory. The first session of the Oregon State Legislative Assembly met in May 1859.) (Documents which are part of the
Early State Records collection were digitized from a microfilm copy of titles originally held by the Oregon Supreme Court Library and the Oregon
Historical Society Library).
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